AIBU to think that Cameron is telling nurses to do things that they already do?

[MyNameIsNotNurse]

Or aim to do given the oppertunity.
Link

David Cameron's 'ideas'
Hourly checks on patients to make sure they have had enought to eat/drink and are comefortable.
Isn't this just basic care?
Also to have members of the public doing spot checks on their local hospitals, isn't this just going a bit too far?

I would really like him to do a 12 hour shift on a busy ward, with sick people needing more than just the hourly walk around to make sure that things are ok.
What about the patients who are in need of 15 minute observations. Patients with poor mobility who take more than 30 seconds to get to the toilet and needs assistance every step of the way. What about the drug rounds? Then multiply that by 30 pateints for 2 staff nurses (some with little experiance) If 1 patient is really ill thats 1 nurse down so 30 patients beeing looked after by 1 nurse, and maybe 1 or 2 HCA.

Why does he not discuss the staffing issues, which most wards have the mountains of paper work which each and every nurse has to get through every shift which takes away from the care of patients.
Most nurses I know stay behind to finish paperwork, turn into work when they or their family is not well, go without breaks, work 12hours a shift, do extra shifts and Given up our measily 3% payrise over 3 years.

He's just making a lot of noise saying we should do things we already do in order that the public think we're not doing them and we lose support?

Yes I buzzed they either took absolutely ages or didn't come at all.On some occasions I couldn't buzz as I'd been left to tandem feed on my own ie I had my arms full of 2 babies with a fresh abdominal scar and no hands free.

Re the STs they had some, they just chose to make me feel like shit.

Perhaps before you come in they should document how many packs you need to bring in and also that if you don't you'll be left in pools of blood and dirty sheets.

As frustrating as it is when your buzzer isn't responded to it is hard to know what else is going on to mean they can't respond. If they are dealing with an emergency unfortunately there may be nobody around to come running.

I do think though on the whole post natal wards seem to be deemed by most as the worst wards they go on which is certainly an issue which needs to be looked at as to why.

HCAs are the ones who do what used to be called nursing generally i.e. washing, feeding, changing beds, etc. You have stated quite clearly why qualified nurses don't have time to do this, which I understand. But there are staff employed to do these tasks.

Mrs

I had c sections,a ruptured uterus and urinary bladder. I was terribly ill after my delivery-ITU unwell. You can get at a buzzer with a hand. It's all about preparation you see; you ensure it is placed at your side so the opposite fingers can grope for it. Don't be so darned self centred. You were not the only needy patient on the ward, I bet.

I see the ST story is now changing. Now it is "they had some but they made me feel like shit"...No longer, I wasn't given any. I'm not surprised they were a bit annoyed at having to answer a buzzer to bring ST's to a patient who failed to bring in enough or get a relative to supply her with some. You only had 40 weeks to anticipate this need, after all.

And if a grown woman is incapable of documenting how much sanitary protection she should bring in with her, then maybe she is not best placed to cope with being a parent at all....[shocked]. As many books/magazines tell you....bring loads, as if for the heaviest bleed you have had and then some. ut to run out so early on when you are presumably newly delivered (because you are still in bed), shows poor planning and unrealistic expectations on your part.

I would like to add that I don't think nurse education is the problem per se. Nurses are qualifying, and either there are no jobs available or they get a job and end up on a ward with minimal staffing, so do not get the induction / preceptorship which they need and end up leaving.

Many of the people who I trained with either left nursing completely or left ward based nursing because they were so unsupported. If a nurse with 20 years experience can't cope with an understaffed hospital ward on her own, then neither can an inexperienced junior staff nurse. If wards were properly staffed, staff would feel valued and stay within the ward environment, ensuring the ward was staffed with a proper mix of senior and junior staff, rather than a constant turnover.

Also, student nurses spend 50% of their time in nursing placements, learning from other nurses and practically learning what has been taught in theory. If the ward is understaffed, student teaching becomes the lowest priority. As such, you end up with nurses qualifying with less experience in being a nurse on the ward.

As a qualified nurse i regularly made beds especially with students and HCA's as it is a good way to teach about pressure care, a chance to talk to the patient whilst the bed's being made and in the case of psychiatry it can help assess how well a patient is functioning-can they follow sequential steps, how is their interaction, levels of self care etc. The student and HCa needs to know how to complete these tasks whilst interacting comfortably with her patient and behaving appropriately. i never tolerated 'talking over' a patient for example. I always address that in any orientation of staff, training and updating of training.

i actually liked bedmaking, feeding, personal care because during a busy day, I could do two things-complete the patients self care needs whilst talking to them. It is those chats that provided me with the most information-is the patient worried about anything for example? What do they understand about their illness etc etc.

Just to clarify-in psychiatric inpatient units we often make the beds with the patient for many clinical reasons.

Nursenic do f**k off you're not really the best advert for levels of empathy in nursing and are not a good advert for the nursing profession as a whole.

You have no ideas re my pain levels,my mobility,my weakness or the condition of my twins. When you've given birth to twins after a high risk pregnancy check back in.

I had a rather worrying high risk pregnancy and a traumatic road to completing a pregnancy ie I had bigger issues on my mind than STs ie finally coming home with 2 living babies.My babies needs were my priority.

By the way I didn't complain not once,I was always civil and I just got on with it.I did a bloody fantastic job.

You pretty much sum up all that is wrong in nursing.

Nursenic it seems increasingly to me that mrsh is clutching at straws to make her beligerent and nasty point

OMG and Mrs. H a porter is not allowed near a new mum/baby unless he is transporting you somewhere. You are angry at the nursing profession for things they cannot control. What can a midwife do if she has 30 patients who all need care and only unskilled staff who are not allowed to assist with 96% of the tasks working with her?

But mrsh i do feel empathy, i had two traumatic births and was immobile after both. it is painful and scary and yes you have a right to be angry about bad care

however what i am angry about is your generalisation about nurses on the whole. you have persistently insulted nurses on this thread. like you, some of them are hurting too. about conditions they are forced to work under. yet you show no willingness to listen to the other point of view

Can I just clarify whether some hospitals have a different buzzer system to ours? Ours you press th buzzer wants and it goes "ner, ner, ner, ner" until someone goes to the bedside and switches it off. I don't understand how these buzzers can be ignored

I have the information you have given. Which is slowly evolving* so to speak. Your temper tantrum gives you away.

Funny that I cannot make assumptions about your health needs based upon what you have said yet you can make assumptions about my nursing based on what i have said.

Boy, you have real inconsistencies in what you say. Big glaring ones.

And packing enough supplies is all part of your responsibility as a parent. A high risk pregnancy is no excuse. Stores deliver these days.

You are just one of those people who passes the buck. I have posted about my responses to poor nursing and the price i paid for whistle blowing so patients like you would be protected (hopefully) from the bad nursing I witnessed. I have put my money where my mouth is.

No, of course you didn't approach any issues with your care in a constructive manner in the hope that any complaint from you might improve things for future patients-No you just wanted to whinge and whine and not actually do anything constructive to effect change.
Join a patients forum. Do something if it's that bad but don't whine about your hard life and difficulties because quite frankly plenty do more with worse to cope with. You sound deeply passive aggressive.

Mrs h why do you not push for the nursing profession to be allowed to have a say in staffing levels? If nurses were allowed to have a say in this stuff poor care like you received would never happen.

Nursing have been pushing for it for years but until the public also demands safe staffing levels it ain't never going to happen.

Bad nursing is when your nurse intentionally neglects you. What is happening in the NHS is not intentional neglect.

Elderly care wards for example have the sickest and most complicated and dependent patients outside of ITU, yet they have the worst staffing levels. Management will not pay to staff those wards with anything but unskilled staff that the nurses cannot control. Sacking cruel nurses and giving them lectures on empathy is not going to fix this clusterfuck of a situation.

Get your wards staffed with RNs and then worry about weeding out the crap. But I think you will find that if the wards are staffed with RNs there will be a lot less crap care and complaints.

Boglach you show no willingness to see opposing views.

Re buzzers the ward was a series of rooms down a corridor,I can't even remember if it made a noise by my bed or just flashed.I was totally isolated and out of view.

The multiple lynching of anybody who dares to be critical of nurses is quite scary.Do you discredit, pull apart every complaint patients may make inferring they are just whiners?

Get a life Nursenic it was 8 years ago and a lot of my complaint was with attitude,the same attitude you have.

I love how Mrs. H is angry at the nursing profession for the lack of care that she received on the maternity ward, yet maternity wards do not employ nurses. I suppose if your local sainsbury's is out of your favourite food or mechanic screws up your car that is the fault of the nursing profession as well.

David Cameron's little gems of nursing advice? Don't get me started...... I wasn't aware they gave out professional nurse qualifications at Eton.

What a pile of utter shite. I qualified in the late 80's and nursed in the NHS for 20 years, the last 5 at senior level. It's the same old story and always will be whilst managers and politicians don't actually listen to what nurses say they need i.e. MORE STAFF. It's all very well telling nurses to check patients hourly, blah blah blah, give them drinks, blah, blah, blah, WHAT THE HECK does he think we studied for all those years? Absolute condescending crap. He can tell us what we should be doing until he's blue inthe face but as long as there is only one nurse per 30 patients it 'aint going to 'appen. As the saying goes 'should I stick a brush up my arse and sweep the floor as I'm going round the ward Mr Cameron?'

But newjob mrsh does not think it is to do with staffing levels. she thinks most nurses, bar a few gems, are intentionally and inherently uncaring

What made them this way then? if it wasn't the system then you are implying they were already uncaring bitches

so the profession employs and attracts a disproportionate amount of the unempathetic types in the world? really?

see if you follow your arguments through to their logical end, they become absurd

Yes, why won't managers allow dementia care units of 28 patients to have more than 2 trained and 1 untrained on an early shift?

Can you envisage showering all those patients, MrsH, doing a drugs round which takes two hrs and must have one trained to dispense and one to run, manning the phone to co-ordinate all the social care liaisoning, filling in 28 complicated menu cards for severely comnused and combative patients? Oh, and several of those patients have already smeared your uniform with faeces, tried to bite, kick and punch because they just cannot comprehend or make sense of having to be washed, fed and clothed? And imagine trying to get meds into those same confused and angry patients, do blood sugars, collect urine samples, take bloods....???

That's about 1/4 of the mornings tasks.

We are not lynching you we are trying to educate you about the issues that led to your lack of care. The nursing profession had no control regarding what you experienced. You had bad care but I highly doubt it was intentional or that it resulted from uncaring midwives and nurses.

Give Nurses control over staffing and skill mix and resources and then you can slam them for poor care if it occurs.

You have offended me hugely mrsh. i am not lynching anyone, just sticking up for myself as i refuse to be belittled and bullied

i have said repeatedly that bad care is unacceptable whether intentional or not. others have claimed to be whistle blowers on their own colleagues. but you refuse to acknowledge that not all nurses fit your stereotype.

I've never displayed a bad attitude with my patients. Thats why i have been proud to be awarded 2 patient voted 'nurse of the trust' awards. The managers never bothered to say 'well done' though.

You, however, are not my patient. And no matter how passively aggressively vile a person you may or may not be be in real life, MrsH, i would treat you with dignity, politeness and respect. I guarantee, you'd never even guess my true feelings towards you if you were my patient and talking/behaving in this manner.

As for get a life - i have one. A full, rich, happy, challenging life in a job that i will always love. Whereas you sound a deeply unfulfilled, prejudiced and intractable person. Your application rejected from nursing school possibly, was it?

And again, your argument has changed. It's complaints about unanswered bells, unchanged sheets and clots on the floor one minute....Now it's mainly about 'attitude'...

And would you answer my previous post?

do you really believe nursing attracts people who are already and inherently uncaring?

Do not use the term 'Lynching' MrsH. Educate yourself on the historical and cultural connotations of that term and choose a better one for people who dare to expose the absolute inconsistencies in your story.

How dare we little nursy folks defend our profession and try to explain some of what concerns us?

How dare we try to ask the public to try to help us get better care for patients by constructively offering suggestions and joining patient forums etc?

How dare we answer you back...